About Me

Kristin Bricker is a freelance journalist and translator. She specializes in militarization, social movements, and the drug war in Latin America.

Kristin is a contributor to the CIP Americas Program. She previously served as the Security Sector Reform Resource Centre's Latin America blogger. Her work has appeared in NACLA, the Huffington Post, IPS, Foreign Policy in Focus, Counterpunch, Telesur, Rebelión, Left Turn, The Indypendent, Upside Down World, Por Esto!, The Guatemala Times, and The News (Mexico). Kristin has appeared on Al-Jazeera, Democracy Now!, Radio Mundo (Venezuela), Morning Report (New Zealand), Radio Bemba (Mexico) and various Pacifica radio programs. Her work has been cited in the Los Angeles Times, Proceso, and the Congressional Research Service's Report for Congress.

Kristin contributed a chapter about Mexico's peace movement to Global Fire, Local Sparks, published by the Indypendent.

Monday, September 28, 2009

With Executive Decree PCM-M-016-2009, the dictatorial government has taken off its mask and really outdone itself by keeping Honduras and the Honduras people kidnapped through its use and abuse of the State's weapons and its desire to manipulate the Constitution and the laws of the Republic.

This executive decree, signed by the de facto head of state Micheletti in a meeting with his equally de facto cabinet, establishes a curfew for 45 consecutive days, during which practically all rights and individual freedoms are annulled, leaving the Honduran people completely defenseless before the usurpers.

From the moment this dictatorial edict went into effect, inalienable rights such as personal freedom, the right to free thought, the right to organize and meet, the right to free movement, rights to privacy in one's own home, and protections against arbitrary detentions ceased to exist in Honduras.

Honduras is at the mercy of a dictatorship that has tried to enthrone itself against the will of an entire people. Honduras is an international pariah and a State that has been kidnapped by a group of unscrupulous and adventurous politicians, military officials, businessmen, and religious kingpins who have no consciences. They maintain omnipotent power over the government in order to enjoy absolute impunity, privileges, and canonry.

As for freedom of expression, which is fundamental to human coexistence and democracy, article 73 of the Constitution of the Republic states:

Printing presses, radio and television stations, and whichever other means of emitting and broadcasting thought, as well as their components, cannot be confiscated, nor closed, nor can their work be interrupted on the grounds that they are committing a crime in transmitting their thoughts, their responsibilities under the law notwithstanding.

We cite that constitutional article for informational purposes. We know that for a dictatorial, totalitarian government, like that which holds power in Honduras, "the Constitution is pure drivel" and "can be violated as much as is necessary," according to the subculture of the political "class" that has brought our country to the point of complete political, economic, and social disaster.

Article 3.3 of executive decree PCM-M-016-2009 prohibits: "Publication in any media, spoken, written or televised, of information that offends human dignity, public officials, or criticizes the law and the government resolutions, or any style of attack against the public order and peace." All of this, naturally, is according to the dictatorial regime's criteria and in no way according to democratic mentality.

It is obvious, therefore, that with the 45-day curfew--that is, for the duration of the election campaigns--the real goal is to torpedo November's electoral process through a plan to consolidate the dictatorship's power, unmasking the de facto regime's faked determination to support the general elections at the end of the year.

This is because there cannot be an electoral campaign without individual freedoms, without the freedom of expression or transmission of thought, without the freedom of association and the freedom to hold meetings, without free transit and the right to privacy in one's own home, and without protections against arbitrary detentions. That is very clear.